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Hey all,

New to warhammer, picked tau they looked kinda cool...and the more i read about them the more they seam to be slightly evil bubbling under a goody two shoes shell, which i like!

As such, my painting is not so great....i know to thin them down, and multiple layers, but sometimes i accidently get in the many little crack bits on the firewarriors armor...So i've been trying to cover that up with putting a sepia wash, and sometimes on other models an agrax earthshade (cant decide which i like most anyway) over the armor to bring the little bits of detail back out. I'm painting them with normal tau colors, but half the helmet/top and bottom of the big shoulderpad/the leathery bits as red instead.


They definitely do not like nice, and shiny, but more dirty and grimy...I'd like to think of it as "Middle of a war" look, when in actual fact its just covering up sloppy painting until i get better at not going in the little lines.

Can tau be grimdark? Every tau army i've seen is all shiny and new and i'm wondering if its blazingly obvious i'm covering up sloppy painting :(

Pictures always help.

Tau generally hit and run and wont stay in one place tooo long.

probably with a lot of troop rotation so there gear and stuff would stay maintained i think.

But anything is possible. (say they where fighting in an extremely corrosive area or something)

Though dont worry about bad painting as you can always strip it fairly easily once you get better.

Edit: Also generic painting tip.
Thin your paints. possibily get or make a wet pallet. it helps alot.
try to invest in a nice brush though nothing beats practice.

A mid-combat look could definitely work out in my opinion, I'm sure there are areas in which the Tau for one reason or another end up bogged down in long lasting warfare.

Also pictures of the paintjob(s) would help.

Yup, real world history is full of examples of short term military actions which unexpectedly drag out to become years-long wars.

In fact, Tau might be particularly prone to this, expecting each new fight to be yet another well-planned surgical strike, and then getting bewildered when their opponents don't fight as expected. So no problems fluff-wise.

Modelling/painting-wise, I'd expect a lot of scraped armour, scorch marks and torn cloth, and cobbled together Tau equipment. Probably no looted stuff though - most Tau would be too proud to lower themselves to use 'lower' races's stuff. However their mercenaries (e.g. Kroot) wouldn't be so fussy.